Tax Return

Not that much, but $294 is a nice windfall. I put two hundred in the bank, had a nice lunch (fried calamari) then went to Kroger. Back-up bottle of booze, then a start on the larder for next winter, cans of tuna and sardines, cans of Mandarin orange segments in light syrup, 10 cans of baked beans. For tonight a got a nice discounted strip steak and a bottle of decent Zinfandel. Like an idiot, I forgot to take the laundry to town. I might go back and do it tomorrow, it depends on how long I read and write later, and the weather forecast. Scott is making some very fine soups at the pub, and his version of chili is quite good. It's striking, the difference in elevation between the ridge and town. The ridge is maybe 10% leafed out, but when I go over the Scioto, the Red Maples, which don't seem to mind being flooded, are fully expressed. So verdant, that soft green of early spring. I went below the flood-wall and poked around in the debris field. Plastic soda bottles as far as the eye could see. There's easily enough timber, caught behind the trees on the First Terrace, to build a house. There was a 12x12, 20 feet long, poplar, and I coveted it. I had no immediate need for it, and, saturated as it was, it probably weighted a ton. I looked at it for a while. There's a complex algorithm for where things are deposited in the debris field. Specific gravity, the angle of repose, how quickly the watershed is draining. But the real reason to go below the flood-wall is to look across at Kentucky. It's beautiful, lush in chokecherry and redbud.To my credit, I don't take any wrack home. I did reposition a Barbie and a Ken doll so that it looked like they were having sex. I got a little lost, looking for mushrooms. I'd parked on a forest service road and rambled of into the woods, got turned around and had to walk out to Upper Twin, then back in on the two-track. Nice walk. Thousands of miniature flowers. I was seriously lost for 36 hours once, in Utah. I'd hiked in to look at some odd rock formations. A day-pack and a couple of quarts of water. Probably 30 miles south of the LaSalles, and it was a landscape of bald domes of some granitic rock left standing when the softer material had washed and blown away. They were pretty far off the beaten trail. It hadn't seemed necessary to carry a compass. Late the next day I finally found some cows, and backtracking their ruts, a large holding pen, then tire tracks, then a ranch. I got a kind of hero's welcome, as I was the first person to ever arrive from that direction. Unfortunately they were Mormon, so there was no shot of bourbon to celebrate. But I did have a nice dinner, a bath, and a clean bed. When they dropped me off, the next morning, near to my truck, Cyrus (Myrtle and Cyrus) said to me that I well should have died; that we had driven 21 miles, as the crow flies, and that I must have walked 30 or 40 miles to get to their place. He slipped me a bottle of whiskey, and wished me well.